The Opening, the Use, and the Future of our 
Domain on this Continent. 



2ln 2lt>l>rcss 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

New York Historical Society 

ON ITS 

EIGHTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY, 

Tuesday, November i6, 1886, 



GEORGE E. ELLIS, D.D., LL.D., 

FRESIDF.NT OF THF. MASSACHUSETTS HISTOUICAI. SOCIETY. 




NEW YORK: 
PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY 

1887. 



The Opening, the Use, and the Future of our 
Domain on this Continent. 



2ln 2ltJt)rcs0 

V/' DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

New York Historical Society 

ON ITS 

EIGHTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY, 

Tuesday, November i6, 1886, 

/^ / BY 

GEORGE E. ELLIS, D.D., LL.D., 

I'KESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTOKICAL SOCIETY. 





NEW YORK: 

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY. 

1887.* 



Officers of the Society, 1886, 



PRESIDENT, 

BENJAMIN H. FIELD. 

FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT, 

HAMILTON FISH, LL.D. 

SECOND VICE-PRESIDENT, 

JOHN A . ^V E E K E S . 

FOREIGN CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

WILLIAM M. EVARTS, LL.D 

DOMESTIC CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

EDWARD F. de LANCEY. 

RECORDING SECRETARY, 

ANDREW WARNER. 



TREASURER, 

ROBERT SCHELL 



LIBRARIAN, 

JACOB B. MOORE, 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 



FIRST CLASS — FOR ONE YEAR, ENDING 1887. 

JOHN TAYLOR JOHNSTON, JOHN C. BARRON, M.D., 
ROBERT LENOX KENNEDY. 

SECOND CLASS FOR TWO YEARS, ENDING 1 888. 

JOHN S. KENNEDY, WH.LIAM DOWD, 

GEORGE H. MOORE, LL.D. 

THIRD CLASS FOR THREE YEARS, ENDING 1889. 

JOHN A. WEEKES, WILLIAM LIBBEY, 

JOHN VV. C. LEVERIDGE. 

FOURTH CLASS — FOR FOUR YEARS, ENDING 1890. 

EDWARD F. DE LANCEY, DANIEL PARISH, Jr., 

WILLARD PARKER, M.D. 

JOHN A. WEEKES, Chairman. 
JACOB B. MOORE, Secretary. 

[The President, Recording Secretar)', Treasurer, and Librarian 
are members, ex officio, of the Executive Committee.] 



COMMITTEE ON THE FINE ARTS. 

ASHER B. DURAND, DANIEL HUNTINGTON, 

ANDREW WARNER, CEPHAS G. THOMPSON, 

JOHN A. WEEKES, GEORGE H. MOORE, LL.D. 

ASHER B. DURAND, Chairman. 
ANDREW WARNER, Secretary. 

[The President, Librarian, and Chairman of the Executive Com- 
mittee are members, ex officio, of the Committee on the Fine Arts.] 



PROCEEDINGS. 



At a meeting of the New York Historical Society, held in its 
Hall, on Tuesday, November 16, 1886, to celebrate the Eighty- 
second Anniversary of the Founding of the Society : 

The exercises were opened with prayer by the Rev. Thomas E. 
Vermilve, D.D,, Senior Minister of the Reformed (Dutch) Church. 

The President, Benjamin H. Field, Esq., introduced the Rev. 
George E. Ellis, D.D.,LL.D., President of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, who then delivered the Anniversary Address, on 
" The Opening, the Use, and the Future of our Domain on this 
Continent." 

Upon the conclusion of the address, the Hon. John Jay rose 
and said : 

" Mr. President, I rise to oiTer a resolution, which I am sure will be 
cordially responded to by this Society, whose Eighty-second Anniversary 
has been honored by the admirable discourse of our learned and dis- 
tinguished friend from Massachusetts. 

" During his honorable and useful career as historian and divine, Dr. 
Ellis has done great service to American history by his varied and in- 
valuable contributions on subjects extending from the early colonists to 
our own times. To-night, after his delightful and graphic reminiscences 
of scenes in the history of this Society, and connected with eminent states- 
men, which some of us well remember, Dr. Ellis has discussed the open- 
ing and uses of our national domain, and has closed his review of four 
hundred years of its past history by glancing at its future. This reminds 
us that the future of our national domain loomed up in the far distance 
before the searching and jealous gaze of European statesmen more than 
a century ago. 

" When the Bourbon courts of Paris and Madrid secretly conspired 
in the plot, so happily discovered and defeated by the American Com- 



6 

missioners, and now so fully developed in the confidential correspondence 
of the French archives, published by M. de Circourt, the plot to confine 
our young Republic to a narrow strip along the Atlantic, which should 
never be enlarged except by the joint consent of the powers of Europe ; 
to restrict our western and northern boundaries ; to deprive us of the 
fisheries and the Mississippi, whose importance was alluded to by Dr. 
Ellis, and which to-day, with its affluents, gives us 35,000 miles of navi- 
gation — during the pendency of that plot, one of those far-sighted diplo- 
mats predicted that the Republic, then an infant, would become a giant. 
" To-day the world recognizes the fulfilment of that prediction, and 
Mr. Gladstone says that we have ' a natural basis for the greatest con- 
tinuous empire ever established by man.' Another English author re- 
marks that ten years in the history of America is half a century of 
European progress. The London Times admits that our development 
in the West is the most important fact in contemporary history, and a 
strikino- exhibit of the magnitude and resources of our national domain 
is given in Dr. Strong's startling work, " Our Country ; its Possible 
Future and Present Crisis." 

*' The whole subject, and the grave responsibility resting on this gen- 
eration to preserve our American institutions and principles against the 
overwhelming tide of foreign emigration, to teach the new-comers, as Dr. 
Ellis says, to reverence and cherish the institutions by which they are 
protected, are engaging the grave attention of our thoughtful citizens, 
and the discourse of this evening, apart from its historical value, is valu- 
able and timely. I have the honor, Mr. President, to submit the follow- 
ing resolution : 

^^ Resolved, That the thanks of the New York Historical Society be 
presented to the Rev. Dr. GEORGE E. Ellis for the able, learned, and 
instructive address which he has delivered this evening, and that he be 
requested to furnish a copy for publication." 

The Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., rose and said that it 
gave him great pleasure to second the fitting resolution, offered by 
Mr. Jay, which he was sure would meet a hearty and unanimous re- 
sponse of approval from the members present, who had listened with 
such manifest gratification, appreciative interest, and rapt attention 
to the eloquent and instructive address of the learned President of 
our sister Society. The address embodied the clear-sighted thought 
and admirable historical philosophy to be expected from the schol- 
arly methods, notable ability, and deep research of the speaker in 
the field of learning with which his name and life-long labors have 
been so honorably identified. He hoped that a copy would be se- 
cured for publication under the Society's auspices, as a charming 



and suggestive contribution to our historical literature, which, it 
seemed to him, it was at once the duty and privilege of the Society 
to offer to the student of our country's career. 

General William T. Sherman rose to express his personal grati- 
fication at the address, and called attention to that portion of it 
which referred to the rapidity of the country's progress during the 
present century. He then anecdotically depicted some of the strik- 
ing contrasts and changes which it had been his lot to witness, he 
might say, in nearly all the zones of our national domain. The ex- 
tinction of the buffalo and disappearance of the Indian, which he 
himself had seen in different parts of the spacious West, giving al- 
most immediate place to great cities of commerce and civilization, 
marked the peculiar era of our generation and nation. The liberty- 
loving people of those communities, far and wide, he felt could be 
relied upon, as they already had been, for their unwavering public 
spirit and patriotism in any moment of concern or danger to their 
country, whose institutions they love and cherish as they do their 
homes. He had listened with the deepest appreciation to the con- 
cise philosophical survey of the country's history, and the sagacious 
and patriotic suggestions as to its future, contained in the excellent 
and able address of Dr. Ellis, and took especial pleasure in further- 
ing the resolution submitted by Mr. Jay. 

The resolution was then adopted unanimously. 

A benediction was pronounced by the Rev. Robert Collyer, 
D.D., Pastor of the Church of the Messiah. 

The Society then adjourned. 

Extract from the Minutes : 

Andrew Warner, 

Recording Secretary, 



THE OPENING, THE USE, AND THE FUT- 
URE OF OUR DOMAIN ON THIS CON- 
TINENT. 



Mr. President and Members of the New York His- 
torical Society : 

This is the third occasion on which, at long intervals of 
years, I have been privileged to attend your annual meeting. 
Twice, as a silent listener and observer, as then became my 
youth, I was here as a delegate of the Massachusetts Histor- 
ical Society — your elder sister, to which you had sent invita- 
tions for representation at your fortieth and fiftieth anniversary 
observances. I well recall the occasion when, in November, 
1844, then the youngest member of the Massachusetts Soci- 
ety, I was honored by being sent here with such associates 
as John Ouincy Adams and Leverett Saltonstall. The occasion 
was one of great interest to you and your guests, who were 
received by your President, Albert Gallatin. The annual 
address was delivered by Mr. Brodhead, who had just returned 
from the European mission on which he was sent to obtain 
documents illustrative of the history of your State. He gave 
an admirable account of his well-rewarded researches. The 
New York Hotel was opened for the first time for a luxurious 
banquet on the occasion. 

Of your guests, the most distinguished and the most 
vivacious of the after-dinner speakers was Mr. Adams, then 
in his seventy-eighth year. The unabated fire and ardor 
of his stern spirit, as you may read in his journal of the 
period, had been just at that time quickened and intensified 



10 



TJic Opening, the Use, and the Future of 



by a personal challenge of his veracity, made by Andrew 
Jackson and others of his political foes. From such a hateful 
charge, he gloried that he could vindicate himself by his care 
and accuracy in keeping and filing notes, ephemeral papers, 
and records. General Jackson, in failure of memory, had 
asserted, that during a stated period he had had no inter- 
course with Mr. Adams, and would not even recognize him. 
The triumphantly indignant journalizer had shown me, as 
we came on in the cars, an autograph note of General Jackson, 
courteously accepting his invitation to dinner at that very 
time. On the back of the note were the names of the 
guests, Jackson's among them. Mr. Adams being toasted, 
or, as he wrote, " rather being roasted," by a compliment 
from Governor Bradish, calling him up from the table, made 
a keen and incisive speech. I well remember his advice to 
young men looking to public life, to interest themselves in 
historical societies, and to make and preserve important min- 
utes and records of historical and personal matters. " Then," 
said he, pointing his advice with his stinging finger, twirling 
like the snapper of a six-horse whip-lash, " if ever the tongue 
of Slander assails you, you can vindicate yourselves." 

In 1854 I was here again as a delegate at your fiftieth 
anniversary, the address being by Mr. Bancroft, while the 
eloquence of the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, at the banquet 
at the Astor House, conveyed to you the response from the 
delegation of the Massachusetts Society. 

On this occasion, you have done me the honor of inviting 
me to be the speaker. How shall I use the opportunity ? I 
should not presume to offer you a theme relating to your own 
State history ; nor should I care to deal with any matter 
specially concerning the people or the annals of my own State. 
Allow me. then, to take a theme which includes us both, and 
more. A large and all-comprehensive subject allures me, 
and you may judge it not unmeet for the occasion. It is as 
vast as the territory of our own national domain ; it is free on 
every side, open to the air all around us, grand and rich and 
picturesque, and burdened with momentous lessons — of actors, 
incidents, and results. 



Our Domain on this Continent. 1 1 



The Opening, the Use, and the Future of our Do- 
main ON this Continent. 

The theme is one in which wild fancy, imagination, ro- 
mantic adventure had the start ; to be displaced in due time 
by stern realities, by sober facts, through toils and tragic in- 
cidents, by enterprise, and by scientific processes of strict 
method and rewarding results. A picturesque past, a mar- 
vellously prosperous present, a shadowy but hopeful future. 
It is the story of the opening of a New World to human 
knowledge and use. It can never be repeated, either in its 
wholeness or in its larger incidents in human experience, un- 
less men can open communication with a neighbor planet. 
The theme is so vast that it must find its attraction and inter- 
est rather in the crowding and shifting of scenes and events 
furnished to musing minds than in any adequate rehearsal 
of it. 

We have to trace a process through nearly four completed 
centuries. Estimated by the life-term of an individual, the 
process has been a long one. It has had its intervals of slow 
and of rapid progress, most vigorous and on the grandest scale 
in the last half-century. It has had its shocks and its surprises. 
All the leading nationalities of the other half of the globe have 
had part in it ; and the diverse characteristics of those nation- 
alities have been signally illustrated in methods and results. 

Two distinct stages are marked in the opening of this con- 
tinent to knowledge and use. The first is that under the 
prompting of curiosity and adventure, quickened by greed, 
fed by unintelligent wonder, passing by enterprise and ex- 
ploration for rational and substantial purposes into the sec- 
ond stage, chiefly within this last century — in which the main 
impulse has been to certify positive facts by actual econom- 
ical and scientific studies of the features and resources of 
the continent, for permanent occupancy and the enriching re- 
sults of development. The process began under the quicken- 
ing but beguiling spur of fancy ; it has passed in our time into 
the gathering's and attestations of sober facts. The change 



12 



The Opening, the Use, and the Future of 



realized in its fulness may be stated thus. In the school 
geographies and maps of the boyhood of many still living, 
the vast and unexplored region lying mostly between the 
Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains was set down in dismal 
and forbidding shadow, as the " Great American Desert," as 
if it were a larger Sahara. That region now, as set forth on 
our railroad maps, divided by the boundaries of magnificent 
States is strewn with sumptuous cities, whose homes and 
public buildings have extinguished all the features of the 
wilderness. 

Perhaps the one most striking result reached by the open- 
ino" of this continent is that which, so wonderful in its method, 
has already lost its surprise for us — by which we have a daily 
prophecy, presented to us on the sea- board, of the weather 
indications, computed and decided for us b}' air and storm- 
currents passing through mountains and valleys in the inner 
depths of the continent, reported by the electric wires to a 
central bureau. What pioneers and explorers must have ac- 
complished to render possible and available those atmospheric 
calculations from storm-centres and currents, through moun- 
tain and valley, is a grand illustration of the process by 
which science reaches its highest fruitage through materials 
for the labor of the brain on materials wrought out by brain 
and muscle. Passengers on mid-ocean have said that, in think- 
ing upon the cable that runs under the waves, they have had 
a feeling of a sort of home comfort and security. The feeling 
must be rather undefinable. But those " talking wires," as the 
Indians on the plains call them, which weave our continent, 
as in a loom for home fabrics, have a strange power of neu- 
tralizing the sense of remoteness over vast expanses. 

To the first discoverers and explorers most justly accrued 
the privilege and responsibility of attaching names to objects 
and localities all new to them. These names, titles, epi- 
thets, given as chance or fancy or some subtle working of 
memory, reverence, or the associative instinct might prompt, 
were assigned spontaneously, generally with little thought 
or regard for fitness. The natural features of these novel, 
strange scenes and objects would affect first the senses, and 



Our Domain on this Continent. 13 

only vaguely and gradually engage the mind. There was a 
double purpose to be kept in view in attaching these names 
and epithets to objects and natural features, as successively 
disclosed to foreign eyes. The first was, to identify a spot 
or scene for subsequent recognition ; and the second, to aid 
in the preparation of maps and charts. Of course, in both 
cases the intent was to establish sovereign and national claims 
to new territories. In this assigning of names and epithets, 
it is not strange that the privilege and responsibility ex- 
ceeded the exercise of judgment and good sense — certainly, 
in many cases, of good taste. The new scenes broke on the 
view of discoverers as surprises, and then received their 
names from the emotions which they excited. 

There are often earnest and perplexed debates in house- 
holds, in which the birth of a child is anxiously awaited, 
as to the name which it shall bear. The contingency of sex 
must be allowed for. When that is decided, choice is free, 
but often embarrassed. Discretion and good sense gener- 
ally confine themselves to familiar household names. There 
are risks involved in the indulgence of eccentric fancies and 
pet preferences. Blanche does not prove a fitting baptis- 
mal name for a girl who grows up with the complexion of 
an Indian ; nor does Grace or Lily become the unlovely or 
the aggressive of their sex. There are many men and women 
around us who fret through their lives under the names they 
are compelled to bear. When this continent was born to the 
light for the eyes of adventurers from the other half of the 
planet, the whole expanse, as one, and every spot and scene 
in it, of land and water awaited a name. Happily the names 
first assigned were not necessarily permanent or unchange- 
able, and many of them very soon had an alias. National 
rivalries, signal events of war or disaster, historic incidents, 
the names of illustrious persons, and lingering memories of 
aborigines have each a share in our territorial vocabulary. 

How did the first navigators and explorers from the Old 
World use this privilege and responsibility of assigning names 
and epithets to the objects which their eyes first beheld here ? 
Very clear and sensible is the statement made by Dionise 



14 



The Opening, the Use, and the Future of 



Settle, the scribe of the account of the second voyage of 
"Master Martin Frobisher " to our north and northwest 
coasts, in 1597, as given in Hakkiyt. He writes: " I have 
also left the names of the countries on both shores [of the 
great bays] untouched, for lack of understanding the people's 
lantniage ; as also for sundry respects not needful as yet to 
be declared. Countries new explored, where commodity is 
to be looked for, do better accord with a new name given by 
the explorers than an uncertain name by a doubtful author. 
Our general (Frobisher) named sundry islands, mountains, 
capes, and harbours after the names of divers noblemen, and 
other o-entlemen, his friends, as well on the one shore as also 

on the other." 

This last statement reminds us of the fact, that the north- 
ern and northwestern lands and waters of our continent, 
more aptly and faithfully than those of any other part, pre- 
serve the names of the bold adventurers and their patrons. 

The first comers were generally ready to accept, at least 
temporarily, the names of islands, mountains, streams, etc., 
given them by the natives, when they could be caught by the 
ear or spoken by the foreign tongue. The merest chance or 
passing incident often attached the name or epithet. The 
Spaniards and the French had a full repertory for lavish use 
furnished them in the sanctities and calendar of their creed 
and church— their saints and holy days and sacraments. The 
heroic and all-suffering missionaries of the Church are most 
worthily identified with the scenes of their toil. Still the 
sprinkling over this fresh continent of more than one series of 
names presents, on the whole, a curious conglomerate of asso- 
ciations. Most incongruous, even painful — if one pauses to 
think of it — as he traces the historic pathway, of invaders and 
devastators, are the sacred epithets strewn over our isles and 
main-lands, so many of which are associated with some dark 
atrocity. It is a relief in many cases to get back to names 
of native use, and to retain only the fairest and the best. We 
will not grudge to the great Bishop of Hippo his standing 
as god-father to the oldest of our cities, St. Augustine. St. 
Laurence at the north and St. Mary at the south may well 



Our Domain on this Continent. 15 

keep their guardianship over historic streams. The whimsical 
Hennepin may be left as sponsor for St. Anthony's Falls, and 
St. Louis may endlessly hold the memory of the monarch of 
France. Not without suggestions of gleams of humor are some 
of the designations assigned by the first sight-seers here, and 
the substitutions for them. What is now known as the beau- 
tiful Isle of Orleans, in the St. Lawrence, was first seen by 
Jacques Cartier, richly clad in vines. He being a Breton 
called it He de Bacchus. Next came the Normans, who, hav- 
ing pulled up the vines, chose to call the island Pomona and 
Ceres. New Spain, New France, New Holland, New Eng- 
land, and New Sweden are names by which the whole or 
large expanses of the territory of the United States have suc- 
cessively been known. Most fitting is it that the rushing, 
turbid stream which divides the length of our domain should 
part with its Spanish name as the " River of the Holy Spirit," 
and resume its Indian title as the Mississippi. 

There is a graver matter concerning the bestowment of 
names for this continent, which involves alike historic and 
poetic justice as touching the rights and the just fame of the 
great discoverer. Most happy was the anticipation before the 
fact was certified, that immediately assigned to the disclosures 
made on this side of the ocean of the appellation of the ' ' New 
World." Most remarkable, too, was it, that the epithet was in 
direct contradiction of the belief of the great admiral, his 
companions, and many of his successors. He had no idea that 
he had found a new world. On the contrary, he believed 
that he had found what alone he had been seeking for — a part 
of the Old World, reached by a new route. He died in the 
belief that he had touched an outlying island off the main-land 
of the old Cathay, or India. He had no knowledge or idea 
of the wide-reaching continent and the vast sea which lay be- 
tween. It was only on his third voyage, in 1495. that he had 
touched the narrows of the main-land of the continent at the 
Gulf of Paria. And the Cabots had sighted our northern 
coasts a year earlier than Columbus' view of the southern. 

How was it that Columbus was defrauded of the right 
that his name, as something synonymous w^ith the New 



1 6 The Openifig, the Use, and the Future of 

World, should be borne by the whole, while the names of a 
host of navigators after him are attached to gulfs and straits 
and bays, to lakes and rivers, to States and mountains ? 
Your own Society, in 1845, initiated and invited the co-oper- 
ation of other societies in the project for considering "the 
expediency of the adoption by this country of a national 
name." The main intent, doubtless, was to do justice to 
Columbus. Other names suggested, as " The Republic of 
Allegania," " The Republic of Washington," did not find 
favor. The project failed. It was in a reply made by John 
Quincy Adams, in behalf of a committee of the Massachu- 
setts Society, to your solicitation, that the venerable pa- 
triot used this strong language: "The name of ' America,' 
irretrievably stamped by uncompromising usage upon both 
continents of the new hemisphere, is a perpetual memorial 
of human injustice, by conferring upon one man a crown 
of glory justly due to another." This " irretrievable " wrong, 
by which this continent takes its name, not from Colum- 
bus, but from Amerigo Vespucci, is all the more to be re- 
gretted, because seemingly unaccounted for and accidental. 

Whether Vespucci had really anticipated both the Cabots 
and Columbus in sighting our coasts, is a question which 
seems now to be hopeless of decision. All known authorities 
which bear directly or even indirectly upon it are inconclu- 
sive. For only Vespucci himself, without a shadow of sup- 
port, is the authority for a voyage made in our waters in 
1497 ; though he was not in his lifetime charged with in- 
justice on the score of his claim. His name is not found on 
any map of the country till after his death. The inexplicable 
and seemingly unwarrantable hap by. which a name was at- 
tached to our whole continent has naturally been followed by 
confusion and unfitness in the consequences which have fol- 
lowed it. An Englishman, a Frenchman, German, Italian, 
Scotchman, or Irishman, all the world over, is content to be 
called by his local name, and generally will insist upon it. 
But a citizen of the United States, as if to minister to his 
alleged vanity, is called everywhere, and commonly calls 
himself, an American ; thus taking a name from a whole con- 



Our Domain on this Continent. 17 

tinent. His contemporaries on the southern half of the con- 
tinent, and even Mexicans and Canadians, are more modest. 
In a convention of one of our rehgious fellowships held this 
year, a proposition was made for adopting the title of " the 
Church of America " — again a claim by our citizens to the 
whole continent. 

In connection with the names first assigned on the conti- 
nent to places and natural features, there is much that is sig- 
nificant in the terms used by the first explorers for grouping 
objects in the vast panoramas which opened before them as 
they penetrated within the country. These terms are large, 
but vague, suggesting an unknown whole from a fragment of 
knowledge. Many of these terms still linger in use ; others 
have been displaced by niore defined and limited substitutes. 
Take, for instance, the term " head-waters," as applied to the 
original sources of a mighty river, as one stood midway along 
its flow. When one large stream was perceived to be the 
confluent of many tributaries, it was recognized as a monarch 
sustained by as yet unknown subjects, or at least as a prince 
of the region, a royal magnate. All the untraced tributaries 
which contributed to swell it were called its " head-waters," 
and the regions through which they flowed became provinces 
of the river-king. These tributaries might be other mighty 
streams, with their tributaries; or the outflow of mighty 
lakes ; or the ooze of vast swampy basins, or the drain of 
lofty mountains. " Head-waters," indeed, they were. The 
sky had as much to do in contributing to them as had the 
earth. Many great national treaties have been complicated 
and contested by that grandly vague term for vast unknown 
water-courses, their beds and springs. The term was easily 
and glibly spoken and written ; but it required long, contin- 
uous, and extended search to verify it. "A divide" is an- 
other of those vague terms, designating a swelling vertebra 
or ridge in some back-bone of the whole, or of a section of 
the continent, which turned the rain-drops and the flow of its 
springs to the Arctic Sea, or the Southern Gulf, to the East- 
ern or the Western Ocean. What a difference and distance 
of time, progress, and familiarity with stupendous natural feat- 
2 



1 8 The Openings the Use, and the Future of 

ures is marked, when what was once known as a range of 
mountains is all taken apart, distributed into its heights and 
peaks and hills, each of which receives its separate name ! 
And " The Forks," a term once so familiar, as designating at 
combined streams the spot where two or more rolling rivers 
unite their waters. 

We are struck by the use of the official title of " pilot," 
as applied to a very important and trusted seaman on each 
of the fleets or vessels, beginning with those of Columbus, 
sailing on these unknown waters. With us the title pilot 
suggests a thoroughly trained expert, who, in'succession to 
and with the help of the experience of others, has been edu- 
cated through eye and ear and hand, by native aptitude and 
by acquired skill, to guide a vessel in familiar waters by 
known signs on sea and land. If the word pilot is from the 
old French, it suggests a ship ; if from the Dutch, it suggests 
a plummet. We associate a pilot with hafbor-waters which 
are familiar to him. But for the old navigators, qualities and 
character and skill took the place of knowledge in the re- 
sponsible office. An eye for keen study of color and cur- 
rents of water, an ear alert for the sound of breakers, a ready 
hand at the helm, a watchful gaze at the clouds, aptness in 
casting the lead, and a wise choice of a place of anchorage 
were the credentials of the trusted leader of pioneer seamen. 
Still, these self-relying men occasionally met the experience 
of the Irish pilot, who, on being asked by an anxious pas- 
senger on his vessel if he knew of the sunken rocks around 
him, replied, " Yes ; " and, as the vessel at that moment 
struck, with sharp crash, added, " and, in faith, that's one of 
them." 

Much the same as to the difference between early and 
modern pilots through our waters may be said of guides and 
pioneers by land in tracking wilderness scenes. Even na- 
tive guides were not always trustworthy, and were often 
innocently, blunderingly, or fraudulently misleading. The 
Indian Tejos led Guzman on a wild-goose chase after the 
Seven Cities of Cibola ; and the lying Vignan entrapped the 
patient and confiding Champlain far up toward the Arctic 



Our Domain oti this Continent. 19 

waters, where he pretended that he had seen a foreign ship, 
that had come in through the coveted ocean pathway. 

In the full view of the disclosure of a new world to the 
earliest visitors from the Old World, we are profoundly im- 
pressed by the range of the alternatives in the realities which 
might present themselves. These alternatives as to possible 
realities and results, balanced, as we shall see, the most mo- 
mentous consequences in the opening and use of the new 
continent, and suspend in deep shadow its future. 

It required more than a century of imagining and of en- 
terprising to assure to positive knowledge whether this 
newly revealed territory was an island, an archipelago, or a 
continent. It was to be tracked and probed and tested, 
point by point, for all its secrets, along its coasts, through its 
bays, and into its recesses. And then, was it peopled or 
unpeopled ? If peopled, how was humanity represented 
here, in condition, development, and resources ? Science, 
through its masters, now assures us that this continent, by 
its geological antecedents and condition, was the earliest 
section of the globe adapted to sustain animal and human 
life. A scientific speculation, in its theories of evolution, 
development, and the survival of the fittest, might, in its ap- 
plication here, have shown a race highly advanced in civili- 
zation, attainments, and power. 

It was for the new comers to test the truth on this wholly 
unknown matter. The members of the human family to be 
met in these strange realms, for anything known or to be im- 
agined to the contrary, might prove to be, in some respects, 
the superiors of their visitors, physically, intellectually, 
socially, and certainly morally — to have reached a higher 
stage in all resources, in civilization, art, refinement, govern- 
ment, wisdom, and power. More than than this : the people 
disclosed to sight and knowledge here might have been 
heroic, warlike, proud, and skilled in prowess and defence. 
They might have been able and disposed successfully to 
withstand and resist the intruders here, driving them into 
the sea, or triumphing over them in every usurping effort. 
They might have exhibited some type of Asiatic civilization, 



20 TJie Opening^ the Use, and tJie Future of 

or some of the characteristic qualities of the Indians of the 
East, which it was supposed would be found here. As it 
proved, the inhabitants were found to be but rudimental 
people — children, lacking physical virility. Their very sim- 
plicity, which might have drawn to them a considerate ten- 
derness, if not humane justice, m.ade them but the subjects 
of a grasping and cruel rapacity from their first invaders. 

Another most serious alternative suspended the value of 
the prize to be won here by invasion and conquest. The 
continent in the whole, or in large portions of it, might have 
shown itself inhospitable, even uninhabitable — blasted and 
scorched by volcanic action, desolate as the surface of the 
moon appears through the peering telescope. Superstition 
was lively at the period of the discovery to imagine all sorts 
of marvels and monsters as keeping guard on the continent, 
and warning off intruders. Had there been a lack of indig- 
enous food, animal or vegetable, or of potable water, only 
the strongest lure of gold and pearls would have encouraged 
a renewal of visits. 

All these alternative conditions, when ignorance should 
yield to knowledge, were suspended in uncertainty for the 
first comers. The process of verifying was slow and tenta- 
tive, quickened by greed and an enormous enthusiasm, in- 
spired by what stood for religious faith. Take into one full 
view the process of this revealing. As already suggested, 
there can be no repetition of it for those living on this earth. 
It may be that this globe is not exhausted of surprises in 
scenes and objects grand and startling, wondrous and sublime, 
for the first human eyes that shall gaze upon them. But when 
and where shall again be revealed to the gazer such an awing 
and gorgeous view as Balbo de Nunez beheld, when, after 
climbing the ocean-peak, where our continent is nearly severed 
by the isthmus, he looked out upon the Pacific Sea ? Colum- 
bus, Verrazano, the Cabots, Cartier, Gilbert, Raleigh, John 
Smith, Champlain, Cortes, De Soto, La Salle, and a fev/ 
others were first to be admitted to a private view of the 
grand features of the New World. True. Humboldt, in his 
turn as an explorer, saw more, and knew more about what 



Our Domain on this Continent. 21 

he saw, than did all these first gazers ; but, for the most part, 
he knew what he was to see. It is this mystery of ignorant 
expectation for revealings to human intelligence and effort, 
which gives the inspiration of endeavor and endurance to 
man, kindles his enthusiasm, and revives his hope. There 
was something near akin, in the feelings and longings of the 
first comers to this new world as they waited for its reveal- 
ings, to those which engage the last thoughts of human be- 
ings passing from an earthly life, as they brood upon the 
august and awful problems of the life to come. 

How fascinating and enthralling were the scenes which, 
either in some vast massings and groupings or in some sur- 
prise of nature, burst upon the gaze of the first explorers ! 
Some of them — perhaps they were the few — had the sense, the 
appreciation, to take in the aspects of grandeur and beauty. 
We have many touches of awe, pathos, and graceful descrip- 
tion from their pens. The first impression from all scenes 
and objects would come in the form of contrasts with all to 
which they had been wonted in the Old World. They had 
come from scenes where human life was drear and jaded, 
often dull and spiritless, worn by toil, disappointment, and 
jarring passions ; where everything for sight, use, or value 
was appropriated by an owner ; where bounds and walls and 
fences marked individual rights ; fields and cities that had 
been scarred by war ; fortified and battlemented strongholds, 
castles, palaces, churches, ruins, and cemeteries. Here nature 
was wild, fresh, and exuberant, free from task-work. In the 
view of the first comers the continent had no owners, even if 
it had claimants and occupants. Some adobe walls, without 
grace or proportions, were all that could be called structures. 
Humanity — if any of the creatures roaming here deserved the 
title — were patterned after a strange, poor fashion. 

Rich in its illustration of the energies and resources, the 
heroisms, the vices, and the follies of human nature is the 
progressive rehearsal of the history of the opening of this con- 
tinent. All the motive impulses of every tone and tinge and 
essence which have sway in the human breast have here found 
their field, their quickening, their aliment, and their retribu- 



22 TJie Opening^ the Use, and the Ftitjire of 

tive experiences. We might give an exhaustive inventory 
of all that there is in capacity, in inspiration and constancy of 
aim, in fortitude and recuperative courage, in the range of 
man's endowments or acquisitions, as drawn out here. They 
are all but tamely expressed by such words as enterprise or 
adventure. Passions wrought to a fever heat, longings and 
expectations absolutely unbounded in their scope and inten- 
sity, and visions borrowing more from unrealities than from 
verities became the ordinary diet of the prime agents in these 
achievements. The belief in a fountain here, the bathing in 
whose waters would renew and perpetuate youth for human 
heart and limbs, seemed to be but in harmony with the means 
and delights for renewing here a prolonged and varying feast 
on life's banquets and revels. 

What rich and exhaustless material for -art, for the painter 
and the poet, is laid by in the progressive revealings and oc- 
cupancy of this continent ! The scene and subject suggested 
may be of groups of races, strange to each other as they met 
in our inner wildernesses as friends or foes, and furnished the 
beginnings of our history. The occasions were not all hostile 
or tragic. Romance, humor even, are not lacking. The field 
is a rich one for a succession of " Knickerbockers," in text and 
illustration. The scenes and examples are most suggestive, 
in the cases of solitary pioneers. 

There are two classes of names or epithets by which, as 
alternates or moral distinctions, we may characterize the acts 
and actors standing out in signal prominence among the navi- 
gators, the invaders, the explorers and conquerors of the 
waters and lands of the New World. Shall we allow their 
chivalrous prowess to assure to them a noble name, or shall 
we describe them from their spirits and deeds as pirates, 
marauders, and desperadoes, goaded by cupidity, rapacity, and 
inhumanity ? To extend the empire of their respective sov- 
ereigns over unknown realms ; to enrich old, impoverished 
states ; to convert and humanize heathen and barbarous 
peoples — were the motives assigned in royal licenses and char- 
ters as the commission of those adventurers by land and sea. 
But even those three paramount and noble objects might be 



Our Domain on this Continent. 23 

found not to run harmoniously in one course, and they were 
subject to compHcations, interference, and rivalries from many 
personal ends and minor aims, as well as from warring na- 
tional sovereignties. The assumption from the start, that what- 
ever there might be here of people or of goods was to be re- 
garded as spoil, as fair booty, to be appropriated by the new 
comers, gave a hard character to the whole achievement, not 
to be relieved. 

The romance, the glamour, and chivalry of those so-called 
conquests are features of them which they may have for us, 
but which did not show themselves to those children of nature, 
whose gentle welcome received the first comers as heavenly 
visitors, and who never afterward lost their amazement over 
the rapacity and cruelty of their invaders as transcending all 
the passions of their own heathen hearts. The fiendish atro- 
cities which wrought such havoc on the islands were repeated 
on the main in the track of Cortes through Mexico, and the 
raiding, reckless, and tragic coursing through Florida of De 
Soto. 

The slowly progressive stages of the opening of this con- 
tinent, its coasts and its interior, to positive knowledge, as a 
substitute for blank ignorance and fanciful conjecture, have 
left singularly interesting historical illustrations in an almost 
unbroken series of maps, charts, and itineraries. It is less 
than a hundred years — namely, in 1795^ — since the first en- 
graved map of the whole American continent was executed. 
The three preceding centuries were all laboriously and in- 
geniously spent in gathering and certifying the materials for 
it. As we look through the series now extant of the draw- 
ings, profiles, sketches, and conjectured localities, from the 
first navigators and explorers who had made sure of one or 
more spots in space, and were free to imagine its relations to 
the unknown around it, we are left to muse over the relations 
which any present moment of time bears to the two eternities 
before and after it. But in the case of these first adventurers, 
as in all other enterprises, a beginning of a process well as- 
sured was the pledge of progress. We have some very early 
maps, which ventured wholly by conjecture to set forth what 



24 Tlie Opening, tJie Use, and the Futnre of 

was supposed to be the whole of this unveiled world, made 
by those who saw only some few miles of its coast from their 
vessels. The first query to dispose y^'i, when they disembarked 
upon firm soil, was whether they were upon a continent or 
an island. The vast bays and estuaries on our coast, which 
are land-locked, though one sailing upon them may see no 
land on either side, baffled many navigators. The assump- 
tion made from the first, and by all of them, that there must 
be some water-passage through this continent to Asia, was a 
lure that was tenaciously followed. Cortereal, in 1 500, was 
the first to suggest that Hudson Strait was such a passage. 
There are many early maps which unite Asia and America in 
the north. Lower California was discovered by Cortes in 
1533. This proved that the continents were severed in that 
latitude and longitude. But it was not till 1728 that Behring 
decided the complete severance between them by passing 
from the Pacific to the Arctic. 

But no mere coast-views, no pricking ^and probing of the 
shores, no entering of bays alone, could solve the problems 
of the New World. The interior must be opened to knowl- 
edge. Ships must be left, or at best exchanged for shal- 
lops, and foot-travel, with weapon and food and courage and 
resources for dealing with wild beasts and men, and all im- 
aginable and unimaginable ventures must pursue the search. 
The cumulative results of exploration, as gathered from ten- 
tative and abortive enterprises, mistakes, corrections, and 
verifications by enthusiasm and heroism, by zeal renewed 
after disaster and thwarted eff"orts, assured the facts, and 
turned mystery and uncertainty into positive knowledge. 
There is a curious map in the British Museum of the date of 
1560, which gives us Chinamen and elephants in the Missis- 
sippi Valley. We owe more to the prowess of individual ex- 
plorers, who were their own patrons and commissaries, than 
even to government parties. The natives, when in friendly 
relations with explorers, were found to have a marvellous 
skill in delineating from their own tenacious memories, as the 
gathering of their keen observations, the most minute natural 
features of vast regions of territory which they had tramped 



Oiir Domain on this Continent. 2$ 

over, if only once. With a bit of charcoal on a sheet of bark, 
or with tracings by a stick in the sand, they would draw a 
most serviceable outline of a region, its plains and elevations, 
its lakes, water-courses, and its springs. Indicating by the 
sign of sleep the length of a day's journey, they would con- 
vey quite a proximate idea of distances. To climb a hill or 
mountain would satisfy an observer that he was not reaching 
the tumbling-off place of the earth in his endless stretch. 
Each little scrap of paper still extant, or truthfully transcribed, 
which gives the course and the actual surroundings of an ex- 
plorer on his way, is highly prized by the subsequent chroni- 
cler and historian as an item of worth in the making up of 
a whole. An expert learns to discriminate between the 
draughts of an honest witness like Champlain and those 
wrought out of the imagination, like Hennepin's. 

These paper-draughts begin about two hundred and 
seventy-five years ago, mainly of our northern lakes and their 
tributaries, extending southward and westward. A com- 
parison of a chronological series of the maps drawn by the 
first explorers in succession, down to the productions of our 
scientific engineers, would in itself be a most instructive 
study. They show the processes by which the wilderness 
was opened. Blank ignorance, keen curiosity, and dazed be- 
wilderment as to what it might contain, yielded slowly and 
grudgingly to patient persistency, till the whole mystery was 
cleared. The records of progress and enlightenment are kept 
by those paper-witnesses as faithfully as if there had been a 
series of surveyors' land-marks set up over the continent. 
But it is not yet complete. Actual surveys have not yet 
tested and verified the allotment, except by latitude and lon- 
gitude, of some of our inner depths. A vast region of the 
Northwest, the abysses of the Black Hills, the spaces of the 
Lava Beds, and even the neighboring Adirondacks, still 
await the exact trigonometrical process with the base-line, 
the theodolite, and the chain. 

The most interesting and graphic method by which the 
successive stages in the opening of our national domain could 
be illustrated, especially for the young in their training in his- 



26 The Opening, the Use, and the Future of 

tory, would be by a series of colored maps, executed by taste 
and skill. The first of this series should show the whole con- 
tinent, without name, boundary, or division of any sort, 
simply with its natural features, land and water, plains, 
mountains, lakes and streams, as what it was for the aborigi- 
nes and their uses ; the water-ways serving them precisely 
as do our railroads the uses of civilized man. The next map 
should show in colors, with vague outlines, the regions re- 
spectively occupied or explored by the different European 
nationalities. The next should indicate, by strips from north 
to south, the original sea-board colonies on the Atlantic, 
planted or held by the English, incorporating the Swedes 
and the Dutch, with another strip for the regions beyond the 
Alleghanies coming to us by treaty, to mark the birth of our 
own nation, or afterward attained by purchase from Spain and 
France. Another map might show the successive lines of 
forts and military posts as our Government pushed westward ; 
another, the series of actual frontier settlements, with forest- 
paths and wagon-roads, till the maps that go with our railroad 
time-tables would complete the story. 

The Use. 

The continent having been opened, especially that part of 
it which most concerns us — our own national domain upon 
it — by the processes and stages just rehearsed, we turn now 
to the uses, the purposes, which the magnificent field and 
opportunity have been made to serve. Here, again, a broad 
range of critical alternatives, as to what might have been, and 
what is, presents itself. We shall find that the possible and 
the actual uses of our domain before it was appropriated for 
us decided the fundamental contingency as to its ownership, 
its mastery. The prize was to be contested between the 
three leading nationalities of the Old World — Spain, France, 
and England. Italians, Dutchmen, Scotchmen, Swedes, and 
Germans were for the most part later claimants. There was 
an Irishman and an Englishman (William Herries and 
Arthur Lake, Wijisor, II., lO, ii) with Columbus on his first 



Our Dotnain on this Continent. 27 

voyage. A noteworthy fact, under the circumstances of the 
opening of the New World, was that the foreign invaders, 
alike of all the nationalities, under their complimentary title 
of " Christians," very quietly assumed a sort of unchallenged 
right of authority, ownership, and possession over whoever 
and whatever in human shape might be found here, and over 
the whole inventory of -nature. They never asked permission 
or said " by your leave," or even regarded themselves as 
guests, on willing or unwilling hospitality. There might be 
more or less of disputing as to the respective rights among 
the invaders ; but there was no deference whatever to those in 
actual possession. It was an axiom which all the invaders 
assumed as having the sanction of the founder of the Chris- 
tian religion, that the heathen must always be dispossessed, 
whoever might come in for the spoils. It is another curious 
fact that these invading Christians, under the banners of their 
common faith, never formed a holy alliance for rooting out 
the heathen as such, but took them oft" in detail. More than 
this, the invaders, at each point where they probed the con- 
tinent, finding the native tribes engaged in a vigorous inter- 
necine warfare, used them as allies in their own onslaughts on 
the savages, while rival European nationalities simply trans- 
ferred their own hostilities to these warring tribes. 

What there was of international law, at the period of the 
opening of the continent, assumed that newly discovered 
regions of the earth were to belong to the crown, and to be 
dominated by the European monarch whose subjects first 
sighted the territory. The Pope of Rome, as the sovereign 
of all these sovereigns, without waiting for the eggs, few or 
many, to be hatched, assigned the whole prospective brood 
to Spain. But the disposal was not regarded as satisfactory, 
even if authoritative, by those who had an interest in it. 
Rights of discovery soon yielded to rights secured by might. 
It was by no means from the first assured what the issue 
would be. It was decided, as we shall see, by the contin- 
gency of use which the grand prize should be made to serve. 
The great question which hung in suspense was as to the 
final and assured possession, mastery, and peopling of this 



28 The Opening, the Use, and the Fntiire of 

domain by one or another nationality of the Old World. It 
might seem as if the way in which that question has found its 
solution was decided from the first, as the continent was so 
soon the scene of a deadly rivalry and struggle between the 
subjects of all foreign powers. The solution is, after the wink- 
ing out of sight of all the rights of those who were actually in 
possession here, the native Indians — that all so-called Christian 
peoples should be admitted to the full, free rights of occu- 
pancy and possession, as representatives of those concerned 
in the earliest struggles here. But this solution was by no 
means anticipated, that our domain should afford an asylum, 
harborage, and homesteads for such a miscellaneous occu- 
pancy. 

The first actual collision between rivals for possession 
was that between the French and Spaniards, in 1565, in 
Florida. The next was between the French and the English 
in the waters of Mount Desert, Maine, in 1607. Here we have 
the representatives of three potent nationalities brought before 
us, raising the pre'ude to the long and bitter strife, the end 
of which was to decide the disposal of the prize. Spain might 
offer its prior claims for discovery, and also for some tentative, 
though mostly abortive, attempts at occupancy by actual colo- 
nization. It is probable that Spaniards had rested at the site 
of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1526. Far better grounded in 
actual rights of possession attained by heroic enterprise, ar- 
duous toil, daring exploration, costly outlay, and the most 
ardent missionary zeal, as well as by conquest of some savage 
tribes, and friendly affiliation with other tribes, were the claims 
of France. No one, I think, of a considerate and generous 
mind can follow the career of Frenchmen, lay and priestly, 
on this continent for two centuries — in its persevering prowess, 
its continuous enterprise, and its splendid achievements in 
first opening the region of the Great Lakes, and tracing from 
its sources to its mouth the mighty stream which divides our 
continent — no one can read thonghtfully the story of New 
France, without wondering at least over the decision of des- 
tiny which has assigned to her here only a little group of fish- 
ing islands in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. 



Our Domain on this Continent. 29 

But, after all, it was the best and wisest USE of the new do- 
main — that is, the securing of it by actual improvement — that 
was to decide its possession and mastership. The fatal flaw 
which very many, not unjust judges, have insisted, impaired 
the absolute rights of possession by the aborigines found on 
this soil, was that they were not owners of it, because they 
merely roamed over it and skimmed its surface, like the birds 
of the air and the beasts of the woods. They did not add to 
its value by improvement or enrichment. So it was not right 
that this wasteful sway of barbarism and savagery should 
appropriate one-half of the globe. The Spaniards and the 
French made little advance, as regards the rightful use of this 
splendid domain, upon the ways of the savages. They also 
were mainly engaged upon spoiling and skimming the conti- 
nent. Gold and pearls were the ends of the Spaniards. 
Peltry and furs were those of the French. Meanwhile, be- 
tween these roamers and skimmers on the southern and the 
northern bounds of the continent, companies of a sturdy 
English race planted themselves and their claims, by strong 
roots, on the Atlantic coast. They took possession in a way 
to hold it. They dug wells, built fences around tilled fields, 
and reared homes. They made sure of a base-line for sup- 
plies by land and water. The safe place on which to stay 
was the fruitful place from which they might swarm. Colo- 
nization settled the use, and that decided the possession of 
this continent. And that was the method of extension and 
advancement. From such a base-line, the series of inner 
mountain ridges and of inviting valleys might be successively 
reached and occupied ; but only for the same purposes of per- 
manency and improvement. And such have ever since been 
and are now the uses to which we have put our domain. The 
raw material of land, like those of iron, cotton, and wool, has 
been manufactured. Labor and enterprise have been its fer- 
tilizers. Before the age of recorded title-deeds, there were 
three symbols of the rights of possession, national or individ- 
ual—the Well, the Altar, and the Tomb. It was by these that 
the Israelites neturning from Egypt claimed a heritage in 
Canaan — the Well of Jacob, the Altar of Bethel, and the 



30 The Opening, the Use, and the Future of 

Tomb of Machpelah. All these implied homes, and homes 
are the tenure of our domain. Nor can we complain that the 
spoils of mines have engaged the most laborious and attrac- 
tive enterprise of so many of our pioneers. For behind them 
must be the uses of all ores, and the producers of food to feed 
the miners. And the railroad bands which cross and bind the 
continent will secure possession and peace within it, however 
weak may be its sea-coast defences. 

Under this heading, of the Use of the great domain, a very 
serious matter presents itself, again coming in the form of an 
alternative of conditions. The first use to which this conti- 
nent was subjected — a use not yet wholly disused — was that 
of a thoughtless, reckless, wasteful draining and spoiling of 
it. The alternative of improvement and enrichment was one 
which was only slowly and gradually recognized. The notion 
assumed by all the early comers to this continent, and, in- 
deed, perpetuated to our time, was that whatever might be 
found here, of resources and products, was practically inex- 
haustible. The scale of natural outgrowths and hidden 
wealth was here so vast, mountains with their treasures were 
so grand, valleys were so exuberant in fertility, lakes and 
rivers were of such volume, forests so deep and sublime, and 
the wild beasts for skins and furs and food were so abound- 
ing and so rapidly multiplied under a prolific nature, that no 
draughts upon them for use or havoc could even sensibly re- 
duce them. The recklessness of the generations preceding 
our own, in dealing at least with the surface products of this 
territory, so far as it was not the sport of utter thoughtless- 
ness, proceeded upon this assumption, that prudence, fore- 
thought, economy, a regard for posterity had no occasion 
here. Already the veritable records of our early pioneers as 
to the enormous massings of bisons and other gregarious 
beasts, which they had beheld, are getting to sound like 
fables. For two hundred years the regions penetrated by the 
Hudson Bay Company were spoiled by a promiscuous de- 
struction of the fur-bearing animals ; and it was not till the 
Indian servants of the company gave warning, that a pause 
was annually allowed for the breeding season. The camp 



Our Domain on this Continent. 31 

fires of hunters and strollers have been nightly fed by the 
consumption of a grove of timber, as if under the purpose of 
warming " all-out-doors ; " and an unextinguished ember, left 
as the adventurers passed on, has caused many a forest con- 
flagration, or swept an unbounded prairie, and left once well- 
watered territories to the desolation of deserts. It is true 
that we have not as yet had occasion here to institute those 
anxious discussions which annually engage the savans of 
the British Scientific Association as to the computable wealth 
still remaining accessible in mines of coal and the metals. 
But none the less our domain is measurable, and proximately 
calculable and ponderable in its resources. We have already 
reached the stage of experience in the Old World at which 
huge disasters attend upon the embowelling of the earth by 
mining. Better than this, we have the experience and the 
forebodings which have called for the interposition of the Gov- 
ernment for the protection and the recuperation of forests. 
W^e have reservations for Indians, but none for the buffalo or 
the beaver. Nothing in or on this earth is really inexhausti- 
ble. The primitive mechanical forces used by men were 
such as were not consumed, and in no whit diminished in 
putting them to service. The water and the air were unim- 
paired in volume or in vigor after they had turned the wheels 
of the mill. But the ocean steamer, which consumes daily 
three hundred tons of coal, makes a cavity somewhere, which 
will never be filled. 



The Future. 

And now we face the question — for us to ask, for others 
to await the answer — as to the Future of our national do- 
main, the Fifth Act of Bishop Berkeley's world-drama to be 
enacted here : 

" Westward, the Star of Empire takes its way : 
The first four acts ah-eady past, 
The Fifth shall close the Drama with the day. 
Time's noblest offspring is the last I " 



32 Tlie Opening, the Use, and the Future of 

We have cast back a retrospect through nearly four 
hundred years. Dare we cast the horoscope of four hundred 
years in prospect ? 

Happily I may take counsel here from the example of a 
shrewd, common-sense, sagacious New England minister of 
the old rural times. In opening a very grave subject to his 
attentive flock, he told them he should arrange his remarks 
on it under three heads. The first head would concern 
what he and they alike knew about it. The second head 
would cover what he knew about it, and they did not know. 
The third head would relate to what neither of them knew 
about it. That third head covers avast amount of preaching. 
The future for our country! Here, again, our subject comes 
to us under the grave conditions of alternatives. The open- 
ing and the use of this continent alike presented those alter- 
natives as to what would be revealed here, its account and 
its mastership. The reality in both cases proved to be pro- 
pitious for us. Let us take that as the omen of destiny. 
Where all is secret, there is no warrant for prophecy but 
through our wishes and hopes. But there are conceivable 
and, to an extent, reasonable alternatives. There are those 
who fashion dismal and hopeless forebodings for our country, 
and who point to the agencies and elements which are to 
work dismay and catastrophe. On the walls of the precious 
art-galleries of this Society hangs the series of most sug- 
gestive paintings, five in number, by Thomas Cole, called 
"The Course of Empire." They open with a fair scene 
of pure pastoral life on the virgin earth, and pass on 
through the stages of culture, wealth, development, struggle, 
and crowning prosperity, on still to scenes of art, splendor, 
and corrupting luxury, with temples and palaces, statues and 
fountains, to the catastrophe of ruin. These dark prophets bid 
us study and mark the lesson from those canvasses and pig- 
ments. There, they tell us, is the veritable history of the rise 
and the decay of the four great empires of the world ; and 
they ask if the catastrophe is not to be repeated here. We 
have reached the stage of enervating, corrupting luxury, 
amid palaces and statues and fountains. The water on which 



Our Do If lain on this Continent. 33 

we live comes from polluted streams. Our public and private 
morals are degraded, and anarchy is in the air. The most 
splendid temples, altars, and statues of Greece and Rome were 
raised when all faith in the beings they represented had died 
out of men's minds and hearts. What shall we say to avert 
the omen, and to set forth the bright alternative ? Many 
there are among us — they are the purest, the best, the most 
generous, the noblest in sacrifice, in labor and holy effort 
in all our land— who with a serene confidence will answer 
thus : " We have a divine religion, as the great conserv- 
ative, benedictive force, which all the preceding great em- 
pires had not. That is our sovereign security." If that were 
the conviction and confidence of all, or even of a large ma- 
jority of our people, and if that conviction and confidence 
were strengthening by trial and experience, it were indeed 
well. But there are those who doubt and deny that belief, and 
among such are those of whom we stand in dread. Others 
there are of such doubters and deniers, of whose purity, sin- 
cerity, and nobleness there is no question, who teach us that we 
must look to human and secular agencies, to attested knowl- 
edge, to certified and illuminating social science for the con- 
servative and benedictive forces of society. Be it so, then, that 
there are these two classes of hopeful prophets of our future ; 
if, however, they differ as to means, they will unite their ef- 
forts and their energies for the same results. Certain it is, that 
no empire or government on this earth ever trusted as we do 
so much to human ability and resources. It is the only gov- 
ernment in this world now that was not founded and is not 
maintained by force, but on the free will of free men. And 
that is why all Europe and Asia look to us with admiration 
and awe and a jealous watchfulness. The darkest shadow that 
now threatens us is that we are beginning to look to force to 
crush, by the vengeful energies of law, the cursed broodings 
of anarchy. The last place on earth where anarchy, the 
outgrowth of despotism, might be expected to show itself, 
is in a democracy ; that where all are free as the very air in 
the making of laws, there should be a defiance of all law ; 
that where all may be engaged in rearing the grandest social 
3 



34 Our Dojnain on this Continent. 

fabric, we should have to deal with the desperate frenzy that 
would undermine it. Our confidence, however, is in this, that 
anarchy is not an indigenous product of our Government, but 
an imported, a foreign foe, not to be recognized for citizen- 
ship among us. We may look back to the Roman Horace 
for the first classical statement of the truth that men would be 
happy if they but realized how many means they have for hap- 
piness, and would but manfully use them. It is, indeed, a try- 
ing and a hazardous experiment which is at issue here. Our 
country was safe and hopeful when its citizens were alike the 
product and the makers of its own institutions. But we have 
opened it as a harbor to all people. Luckless, imhappy, ill- 
trained in the lands from which they came, they have been 
most eager to crowd here to enjoy a heritage which others 
have wrought for them. The one condition for peace and for 
happiness for them, and for ourselves, is that they respect and 
honor and uphold the institutions whose privileges and bless 
ings they have sought. 



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